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Friday, 4 September 2015

"Fascinating and important": Judge delivers verdict on Funny Bones

After the presentation for the 2014 Theatre Book Prize one of the judges, Professor Viv Gardner, was very complimentary about Funny Bones, telling me that Freddie's autobiography was "important to our understanding of the whole period he worked in." She has now sent the following:

This is
one of those stories that just have to be told. It is unique – there
has never been quite such a long and varied a career as Freddie Davies’s
- but it is also the story of popular entertainment
over the past 70 plus years: the hey day and decline of variety, clubs,
cabarets and cruise entertainment, the rise of television comedy and
subsequent changes in fashion, and the shifting relationship between
popular and ‘high brow’ performance. Freddie Davies
has played every type of theatre in the country, from working men’s clubs
and Butlins to the Royal Shakespeare Company, television and film,
though his earliest memories are of the halls and variety theatres of
the forties where his grandparents worked. His
autobiography is replete with names and places, many long since
forgotten, details of acts – his own and others’ – and whole bills. It
is also a ‘back-stage’ story. Davies has worked not just as a performer,
but also as a producer, so the autobiography charts
not just his own stage career but also the challenges of working with
and supporting other artists – the ups and downs, the nuts and bolts of
the entertainment business. A researcher’s dream. It is a fascinating
and important story, not just a personal but
also a social and performance history.

Viv GardnerProfessor Emerita, University of ManchesterJudge, Society for Theatre Research 2014-15

Funny Bones: My Life in Comedy by Freddie Davies with Anthony Teague is available from amazon (paperback) or direct from Scratching Shed Publishing (paperback or limited edition hardback). You can read an extract here.